


I'm Not Falling (Please Catch Me Anyway)

by fractalgeometry



Series: Catch Me [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Jake Peralta, Hurt/Comfort, Team as Family, but the squad takes care of him, jake has a tough time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-22 10:21:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22347907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalgeometry/pseuds/fractalgeometry
Summary: When Jake agrees to go undercover with the mafia, he's excited. It's like being a secret agent in a movie! The movies never show the loneliness, though. Or the fear. Still, when it's over he knows everything will go back to normal. He's totally fine now.Really.~Or: Jake's stint as an undercover agent leaves him jumpy, distracted, and determined to prove to himself and everyone else that he's okay. The others are equally determined to help him actually be okay. There are more of them. They win.
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Rosa Diaz & Jake Peralta
Series: Catch Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1615450
Comments: 20
Kudos: 276





	I'm Not Falling (Please Catch Me Anyway)

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a short, fluffy fic based on a different topic. Instead it turned into over 6k words of fluff and angst (my favorite mixture). I intend to write something for my original idea someday, but until then, have this! I'm very happy with it and super excited to share.

Jake Peralta loves his job. He loves puzzling out particularly tricky cases. He loves the feeling of accomplishment when he closes one. He loves coming to work every morning and knowing that he’s surrounded by people who will have his back if necessary. He loves pranking those same people, because even when they look like they want to lock him in a closet and throw away the key, he knows they would never actually do that. 

Probably. 

He never knows what Rosa might do when provoked. 

The point is, he has a fun job, a great team, and a complete lack of brain-to-mouth filter. 

(That last one is a blessing and a curse, but Jake chooses to see it mainly as a blessing.)

Jake is happy with his life.

Of course that’s when a case blows up in his face (metaphorically, at least), the whole you’re-suspended-no-wait-you’re-fired thing goes down and Jake finds himself facing months away from the people he holds most dear. 

It was surprisingly easy to yell and metaphorically throw things in the hearing room full of bland-faced superiors, easy to trust himself and his future to the captain that has made his way firmly onto Jake’s Trusted People list. When they asked him to go undercover he said yes without a moment’s thought. It felt like he was in a movie, at least until they shot down his cover identity plan. To be fair, it would probably be easier to spend six months as himself than as a random person he came up with in the parking garage. 

It’s harder now, standing in the captain’s office with most of his squad, blinds pulled and door latched. It hit him about forty seconds ago that he’s _leaving_ for a not-insignificant length of time, and that hurts more than he expected. When Captain Holt shakes his hand and tells him he’ll be missed, Jake’s throat closes for a solid second. 

It reopens enough for him to say, “I’m gonna miss you guys.” 

Then he takes a deep breath and the fun of getting to insult his coworkers comes back. He storms out of the office, throwing insults over his shoulder. He peripherally registers the shocked faces of the people in the bullpen as he turns and flings his tie at Holt. As it bounces off of the man’s chest, Jake gets one last glance at his team. They’re all looking at him, smiling a little. Even Rosa. Even _Holt._

The people in the bullpen would say he kicked the trash can out of anger. Jake and the group in the office would say he was just successfully acting the part of furious, recently fired employee.

The best explanation for the abuse of the poor trash can definitely has something to do with the soft, warm feeling in Jake’s chest that he doesn’t know what to do with.

~

There’s not much camaraderie in the mafia. It seems like there is, but most of it has a harsh edge to it, as though he’s being tested. Jake is tired of tests, but he gamely avoids showing it and chalks his discomfort up to the obvious things, like being surrounded by criminals who would probably shoot him on the spot if they found out what he was up to. 

He lies in his bed at night and wishes he was home at the precinct. Throwing candy wrappers at the trash can and annoying his coworkers feels infinitely preferable to this feeling of being alone among people who think he’s their friend. That’s the real kicker to him. The mafia guys aren’t what you might call kind, and he mostly doesn’t even like them that much. But _they_ trust _him_ , at least as much as they trust anybody, and that leaves him feeling awkward more often than he’d like. Sure, they’re criminals who would have no qualms about killing him if they found out the truth, so of _course_ he wants to take them off the streets, but he doesn’t like thinking about betraying them. Jake definitely prefers his old type of case, where he doesn’t have to make friends with the perp to arrest them. 

He wraps his arms more firmly around the tuft of blanket that he’s clutching to his chest and tries to calm his thoughts. He isn’t sleeping much these days. It’s hard to sleep when all the people you interact with on a daily basis are constantly one misstep from dangerously hostile. What if something tips them off overnight? Even if they don’t have a key to the door, which he assumes they do, he has no illusions about that stopping them. He’d be dead before he even got a chance to react.

 _Which, Jakey,_ he tells himself, _is all the more reason to go to sleep. Not sleeping‘s not gonna help._

He closes his eyes and thinks of Holt smiling at him as he stormed out of the precinct all those months ago. Holt had looked _proud_. Jake thinks he had never in his life felt so good about himself. 

_That’s why I’m here, he reminds himself. Do the thing, catch the bad guy. No - bad guys. Plural._

It fails to comfort him the way it had at the beginning of this adventure. All of his methods of keeping his spirits up were becoming less useful by the day, actually. It would have worried him, but it ranked so low on the list of Jake Peralta’s Worries that he barely noticed. 

Something in the hallway creaks faintly, and Jake tenses, opening his eyes against the dark and involuntarily squeezing the blanket. No more sounds follow the first, and after several minutes he consciously loosens his grip on the fabric and tries to relax.

When the square of light through his curtains brightens with the morning light, Jake isn’t sure if he slept at all.

~

Jake almost can’t believe it when he finds out that the plan for the sting is ready, complete with a date and time. If anything it makes him more nervous, sure that at any moment the family will discover law enforcement’s plans and wreak havoc. On the morning of the wedding he watches the square of light in the curtains lighten for the last time, his thoughts a tumbling mess of fear and the familiar joy that comes with the knowledge of a case soon to be closed. 

His thoughts wander to the rest of the Nine-Nine. It’s been so long since he’s seen them; maybe they’ve moved on and found another detective to take his place. Does he even know that he’ll get his old job back after all this is over? What if he’s transferred to another precinct, with strange detectives and a strange captain?

He shoves the thoughts from his mind. They have no reality to them and after all, he has a persona to slip into and a crime family wedding to get to.

~

The wedding goes off without a hitch ( _or rather, with a successful hitch,_ Jake thinks), and everyone crowds into the reception hall. Jake gets up and makes a toast, throwing in a cop joke before he thinks better of it. Luckily everyone laughs, and he lets out the breath he had started holding the second the words were out of his mouth. 

The kisses that come with being accepted of an Italian crime family are, without a doubt, Jake’s least favorite form of affection. He endures them, preserves his cover, even cracks a joke. Then he wanders off to find someone to strike up a conversation about food with. He slides his line about meatballs neatly in, then focuses his attention on keeping his face straight as he anticipates the- _there._

“NYPD, put your hands up!”

The yell reverberates through the room, joined by the screams of surprised mobsters. Officers pour through all the doors, and Jake neatly moves himself away from his former conversation partners just in time for Terry to scoop him up.

Jake puts up a fight. He could never win against Terry anyway, so he can flail his limbs and screech insults without worrying about compromising his exit plan. He yells his heart out right up until the second the door to the surveillance area latches behind him and cuts him off mid-expletive. 

When he turns, already partway through a flippant greeting, Holt is watching him. Jake’s chest tightens yet again, and despite the fact that Holt is right, this is definitely not the time for anything but the job at hand, he finds himself walking over and hugging the man. He feels Holt stand there and not react at all - much like Jake usually does, come to think of it - but it’s still a few seconds before he can get himself to let go. This is the first truly friendly face he’s seen in _months_ , and yeah, maybe it’s a little weird that his first thought upon seeing Holt’s Stone Face was _oh yay, a friendly face!_ But damn it, he’s spent the last six months half-expecting to get found out and die any day. He can have this. 

~

Jake can’t sleep. He had expected to pass out tonight, safe in his bed after an eventful day. Instead he’s lying there, completely awake, ears straining to catch any and all sounds. It’s like his body won’t admit that he really is safe now, with all the mobsters arrested and put out of reach.

Hours pass. The night feels exactly like all the other ones in the past months. Jake squeezes his blanket and tries to think of nice things. He’s going back to the Nine-Nine in the morning. He’ll get to see his squad. This whole undercover thing is over. 

~

Walking back into the precinct feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He’s greeted enthusiastically and regaled with stories of the events he’s missed. When Captain Holt comes out of his office and gives them twelve seconds to get back to work, Jake reels off the funniest highlights of his half year and slides back into his desk, almost glad to have an excuse to leave the spotlight. He’s aware of how out-of-character that sounds, even in his own head, but he doesn’t know what to say. He can’t tell them about the constant thread of fear that had woven itself through the entire experience, especially not now that it’s over and all that will recede. He doesn’t want something embarrassing happening, like Amy or one of the others asking him if he’s okay when he’s long since okay.

Heck, he’s okay now.

~

Jake is definitely not okay. He hadn’t even been back for a day when Holt brought the news that one of their targets had escaped the sting. In a fit of perfectionism, Jake had driven off with Charles to find the guy, ended up blowing what was left of his cover, and discovered that the man was well and truly gone. Beyond his reach.

He knows that his friends think his mood is because the perp got away. He lets them think that - even encourages it. He made sure no one sees him Googling “how to change locks on a door”, and leaves the building to call a locksmith for an appointment. 

The locksmith is booked for three days. Jake buys a sliding bolt lock on his way home and spends a solid two hours trying to attach it to his doorframe before admitting that it doesn’t fit. He’s getting into his car to drive and get a different lock before he notices it’s almost midnight - way too late for the store to be open. He debates the merits of trying to find a twenty-four hour hardware store and decides that that’s overly paranoid. The lock he already has is probably fine, after all. 

He goes upstairs and watches stupid YouTube videos for an hour before grudgingly accepting he should probably go to bed. Not that anybody will know if he doesn’t. 

He stays up for another forty-five minutes. When he finally drags himself off the couch to turn off lights and go to bed, he wedges a beat-up chair under the doorknob like people in movies do. It doesn’t work for them and he knows it wouldn’t work for him if someone actually tried to break in. He's a detective, after all; he’s seen break-ins before.

He leaves the chair anyway. Useless it may be, but it makes him feel a tiny bit better.

~

No one jumps him in his sleep that night, or the next, or the next. When the locksmith comes she recommends just rekeying the locks, as it’s cheaper than replacing them and just as effective for Jake’s purposes. Jake agrees - try as he might, crushing debt is a hard thing to escape - but an irrational part of him feels sure that it’s not effective enough. 

He only relaxes even a bit when he’s at the precinct, surrounded by his badass friends. Even then he ends up finding excuses not to sit at his exposed desk, instead taking files to the briefing room or evidence lockup where he feels marginally more secure. 

Aforementioned badass friends notice his behavior. Of course they do. They’re some of the best detectives around, not that a person would even need to be a police officer to notice that their coworker who used to perpetually be under everyone’s feet is now missing from his desk on a regular basis. 

Terry is the first to actively follow him. On Jake’s fifth day back in the precinct, he shows up in the evidence lockup where Jake has a file spread out over the table and puts his hand down right next to the piece of paper Jake is studying. 

“Hi, Sarge,” Jake says, looking up. “What’s going on?”

“Jake! What are you doing back here for so long?” Terry sounds like he doesn’t know what he wants the answer to be.

“More space to fling paper around,” Jake replies promptly. “My desk isn’t big enough.”

“Hm.” Terry folds his arms and looks Jake over. 

Jake goes back to his work. After a minute, he hears Terry leave the lockup. He keeps his eyes on the paper and pretends that what he just said made perfect sense.

“You okay, Jake?” Charles asks later that day when Jake is back at his desk before going home.

“Yup! I’m good! Never been better!” Jake _thwaps_ a folder down on the desk.

“You sure?” Amy chimes in. “You’ve seemed tired.”

“And you’re never at your desk anymore!” Charles adds. 

Jake rolls his eyes. “I’m _fine_.”

“You sure?” Amy repeats. 

Jake sighs. “Yes, I’m sure. It’s just weird having so much _work_ to do after all this time.” He grabs his bag. “See you all tomorrow!”

“See you,” Charles echoes. 

Amy doesn’t say anything. She just watches him leave with her eyebrows slightly pulled together, like when she’s working on a particularly puzzling case.

~

The next day, Rosa shows up in the briefing room where Jake is intently studying yet another file in the back corner. She slides into the table next to his and smacks her own pile of papers onto it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” Jake doesn’t look up from his work, but he’s not paying attention to it anymore either.

“You know what.”

“Nope.”

“Okay.”

Rosa pulls out a pen and begins filling out the paperwork she brought. Her pen is practically silent, but Jake still spends a solid two minutes listening to the tiny scratching sounds it makes while staring at the page in front of him without seeing it. Then he gets back to his work, feeling Rosa’s silent, decisive presence a few feet away. 

After about twenty minutes, she stands and he can hear her paperwork rustle as she scoops it up. She kicks him lightly in the ankle, making him yelp and look up. She’s already walking towards the door, so he just watches her receding back and notices that he feels a little more centered than he has in a long time.

He still barely sleeps that night.

~

Eleven days after Jake returns, Holt calls him into his office. Jake stands, turns with his signature wry smirk, and trots into the room.

“You wanted to see me, Captain?”

Holt takes off his glasses and leans his forearms on his desk. “Yes. Peralta.” He stops for a moment, clearly considering his next words. “I have noticed a lack of...overtly boisterous behavior emanating from the bullpen in recent days. This was understandable during your...absence, but I anticipated a return of such conduct would begin immediately after your first step out of the elevator. To my surprise, you proving that expectation incorrect has been...unsettling, rather than restful.” He looks intently at Jake. “Are you...all right, Peralta?”

Jake looks at the stony, honest face in front of him and feels the web of confusing feelings caught inside him try to break out into the daylight. He takes a sharp breath against it. “I’m fine, sir.”

Holt doesn’t directly argue with him on that. Instead he says, “I have also noted that you have not been sitting at your desk, which would be the standard place from which to do your work.”

Jake laughs awkwardly. “Well, you know, sometimes you just need to spread out all your papers. And, uh, there’s more space for that some other places.”

“Sergeant Jeffords did mention that he found you working in the evidence lockup.”

“Just trying to be more efficient, sir!”

Holt lets that one hang until Jake drops his gaze. Then he says, “Very well. I do expect you to work at your desk whenever possible.”

Jake nods. 

“And, Peralta.”

Jake brings his eyes back up to meet the captain’s.

Holt leans forward and looks intently at Jake. “The squad is on your side, if you need anything.”

Jake nods again, quickly. “Awesome. Great. Yeah. Thanks. I’m good. No problems. I’ll see you later?”

“Dismissed.”

Jake hurries out of the office. He slows when he passes his desk, then speeds up again and darts into the breakroom. It’s blessedly empty, so he throws himself on the sofa and places his face firmly in his hands. He hears his own voice in his head, telling himself and his coworkers the same words over and over.

_I’m fine._

_I’m okay._

_I’m good._

_No worries._

_I’m sure._

None of that is true. He’s so far from okay it’s almost laughable. He doesn’t know how much he’s sleeping, but it’s nowhere near enough. He hates being in open spaces, he can’t focus.  
_Holy bananas,_ he realizes, feeling an uncanny desire to laugh. _I’m so screwed up._

And then he does laugh, a joyless laugh that he tries to keep quiet so no one hears the sound of Jake Peralta accepting that he might, possibly, not be okay.

~

Two weeks after Jake gets back, he’s sitting in the breakroom after a successful arrest, mindlessly scrolling through his phone. He knows he should be working on the paperwork to move the case along now that he’s caught the guy, but he really doesn’t want to right now. His mind is full of the now-familiar haze of exhaustion, and the effort that it would take to push through it is beyond him at the moment. Even focusing on his phone seems hard.

Gina is poking at the coffee maker, which Jake approves of. Maybe some coffee will help him get through the day. A minute later, Amy walks in and sits down at the table with a pen and some forms. 

“Hey, Jake,” she says. “How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” he replies automatically. “I mean, just caught a guy I’ve been chasing. That’s always fun.”

“Definitely.” Amy smiles at him and turns her attention to the papers in front of her.

Jake goes back to his phone, but the images on the screen seem to just be a blur. He sighs and turns it off, shoving the phone into his pocket and running his hand through his hair. He should really get off the sofa and try to do some work, but he actively doesn’t want to. In an effort to find a hidden store of energy (or really just out of frustration), he drops his head backward onto the top of the sofa and closes his eyes for a second.

~

Something is digging into Jake’s neck, which aches. The light filtering through his eyelids is much brighter than his bedroom normally is. The room is quiet, but there’s an ongoing burble of noise somewhere nearby. He tenses, then squints one eye open.

He’s lying on the sofa in the breakroom, head resting on the arm (which does not make a good pillow, apparently). His legs are half-falling off the edge, and his left arm is twisted uncomfortably under him. Amy is still at the table, scribbling something with her pen. Gina is slouched across from her, mug in one hand and phone in the other. 

“What’s going on?” Jake croaks.

Both women look up from whatever they’re doing.

“I am working,” Amy says.

“And I,” announces Gina, “am discovering the best new app game of the hour.”

“You,” Amy adds, “were sleeping.”

Well. Jake had to admit that all signs had pointed to that being the case, but it was strange to have Amy “When-We’re-On-The-Clock-We-Shall-Work” Santiago seem so unbothered by it. 

“You let me sleep? At _work?_ ” he asks incredulously.

“It’s not like you’re doing it at home,” she said, and wow, Jake knew that he wasn’t nearly as good at pretending as he might like to be, and that his friends were all detectives, but he didn’t expect to just be _called out_ like that. He doesn’t know how to reply. He ends up just gasping like an offended teenager for a few seconds before managing to say, “I mean, well, yeah, but, well,” then he sighs. “Thanks.”

Then he flees, out to the bullpen where he makes himself sit down at his own desk to start his paperwork. Ever since his conversation with Captain Holt he’s been trying to work at his desk more, and now that he’s vaguely rested it seems like a good time. Or rather, he realizes upon looking at the clock, decently well rested by his current standards. He slept for almost four hours. It’s a miracle Holt didn’t notice and read him the riot act for not doing his job.

Amy and Gina trickle back out to their desks a few minutes later, and Jake wonders if they purposely stayed to keep him company while he napped.

He dismisses the thought. He knows he doesn’t need company to sleep, so why would they think such a thing?

Lying alone in his bed that night, he admits that having them there had definitely helped.

~

The squad has definitely noticed something is wrong. It makes Jake feel like he should have tried harder to actually be okay, and he kind of hates that. But...at the same time it’s good to know they have his back. He still hasn’t asked for any help, and no one is overtly giving it, but they’re all doing something. When Jake hides in the back of the briefing room to do his work, Rosa keeps mysteriously deciding to do the same. When Jake is working at his desk, Terry often finds some reason to be up and pacing around behind Jake’s back. Charles brings food - it’s his love language and Jake actually ends up liking some of it.

His naps in the breakroom become a habit. He’s careful not to do it every day, and almost never for as long as the first time, but if someone is sitting in there he’ll slip in and curl up on the too-short sofa. Sometimes the same person will be there when he wakes up. Often it’s another member of the squad. Either way, they make sure he never ends up sleeping alone, and for that he’s grateful. The heavy exhaustion begins to lift, even though he’s pretty much never sleeping for more than an hour at night without waking up. 

With more sleep comes more energy. He starts cracking more jokes. He works faster and better than he has since his return. He chases down criminals and feels the rush of success when he catches them. On really good days, he can spend the whole day working at his desk without retreating somewhere with more walls. 

For the first time since realizing that he’s not okay, Jake starts to feel like he could be someday.

~

He goes to Rosa when he figures it out. Rosa, because while emotions aren’t her forte, she’ll always give him reliable advice. Rosa, because she’ll gripe at him for days about small things, but she’ll always do what’s best for him overall. 

“Rosa?”

She turns and looks at him, face impassive. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think I can live in my apartment anymore.”

“Why?”

He lifts his shoulders and drops into the chair next to her desk. “Because, while I know they’re all in prison - except fucking Freddy - and I’ve changed my locks and everything-”

“You changed your locks?”

“Yes, that’s not the point. Just- they all know where I live, and I totally betrayed them, and, Rosa, you don’t know what they do to people who betrayed them-”

“I can guess.”

“So I’m not sleeping at night, because maybe tonight is the night that one of them shows up in my room, and, like, I’m just so fucking scared.”

“You think you’ll sleep better in a different apartment?”

“I mean, well, it makes sense, and it’s my best idea-“

“Cool. We’ll get you a different apartment.”

Jake isn’t sure what to say to that, because honestly, it’s what he hoped to hear, and he’s so grateful to Rosa for saying that, but he doesn’t have the first idea where to start looking for a new place to live and it feels way overwhelming at the moment.

She stands up and leaves then, ruffling his hair on the way past like an annoying older sister. The touch sends a good kind of shiver down his spine, and he almost wishes she would do it again. The thought doesn’t bother him as much as he feels like it should. 

~

“Briefing room in two minutes!” Rosa announces a few days later. 

Jake looks up, frowning. The morning briefing has been over for hours; there’s no reason to be assembling all of them again. But no one else seems surprised, so two minutes later he’s sitting down with the other detectives. Holt is nowhere to be seen.

“Okay,” Rosa announces from her place at the front of the room. “Jake needs a new apartment and we’re going to help him find it. Meeting over?”

“No, no, come on, Rosa,” Terry says. 

Jake is confused. “Wait, you _told_ them? I don’t have any plans for what I’m going to do!”

“Exactly,” Amy says from behind him. “We made plans so you don’t have to.”

Jake swivels his head so fast he thinks he might have pulled a muscle. “You what?”

Rosa sighs her long-suffering, _I-am-surrounded-by-idiots_ sigh. “We’re going to find you an apartment that you can afford and help you get set up because you’re incapable of asking for help on your own-”

“Okay, Rosa.” Terry interrupts.

“Right. We’re going to help you get set up because we’re your friends and we care about your health. Better?”

Terry nods. Jake sits silently for once, baffled beyond his ability to protest.

“ _And_ ,” adds Amy, “one of us is going to sleep over at your house each night until you move.”

Jake can protest that one. “No, you’re not. I can take care of myself.”

They all look at him like he’s said something monumentally stupid. Jake knows that look.

“Of _course_ you can take care of yourself,” Amy says.

“You’re a badass cop!” Charles agrees.

“We all know that,” Amy continues. “Even you. But-”

“You’re not sleeping at night,” Rosa says flatly, interrupting Amy. “You’re sleeping here, at work, when at least one of us is in the room. So we’ll put one of us in your room at night instead.”

“Okay, so first off, that sounds incredibly creepy,” Jake begins.

“Even I have to admit it does,” Charles interjects.

“Second, what if I don’t want one of you invading my house every night? Maybe I want some alone time. What if I say no?”

“It’s an interdiction! You can’t say no!”

Amy sighs. “Intervention, Charles. The word you’re looking for is intervention. And if you say no, we’ll reconsider. But you can’t go on like this, and we’re all sick of pretending not to notice that one of our friends needs help.”

Jake looks around the room for backup, but no one is adding anything to Amy’s speech. They’re all looking at _him_ instead, with all-too-familiar determined expressions. He groans and drops his face onto the table, burying it in his arms.

“Fine,” he says, voice muffled by his sleeves. “But you have to figure out where you’re going to sleep. This wasn’t _my_ idea.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Amy says. “Gina is lending us her old air mattress.”

Jake huffs a defeated sigh into his arms. Someone pats him on the back and he slumps further forward, suddenly unable to move. He feels annoyed and grateful and insulted and loved all at once, and it seems like the best place to process all of that is right here on this table, before he shows his face to anyone again.

~

Operation Babysit Jake (as Jake has privately dubbed it) commences that very evening, when Gina shows up at eleven-thirty with an air mattress and pajamas. She brushes past him and proceeds to set up the mattress in the corner of his room, kick all his clutter into a pile in the other corner (as Jake winces and grumbles about people invading his house), and announce that she’s going to bed.

“I’m leaving by seven,” she says. “I still have to get ready for work at my place, so I need my sleep now.”

She climbs under her blankets and stares at her phone while Jake awkwardly gets into his own pajamas and bed. Then he turns off the light and lies there, listening to her breathing slow as she falls asleep. He focuses on that one, sure sound until he too goes to sleep.

He wakes up a few hours later, heart pounding and body tense in a way that has become very familiar over the past months. He makes a sound very close to a whimper and reaches to turn on his light, reassure himself that he’s alone and that the door is locked. As soon as he flicks the switch, Gina groans and Jake jerks fully awake with a bolt of terror, falling off his bed in the process.

“Turn off the fucking light, Jake,” Gina says, eyes still closed. “A girl needs her beauty sleep.”  
It’s a few seconds before he can make himself move, long enough that Gina growls, “I mean it, Jake,” but he gets there.

Then he lies there for hours, curled in a ball, listening to Gina’s faint breathing until her alarm goes off at 6:58 AM and she’s gone, leaving an empty air mattress and a friend who is pretending to sleep.

~

“That didn’t work,” Jake tells Gina the next day.

“I thought it went well.”

“I woke up, panicked, and didn’t sleep the rest of the night! I’m calling this thing off.”

“You slept for three hours before that.”

“Exactly! I- wait, what?”

She smirked at him. “You, Jake Peralta, slept for three straight hours in my magnificent presence. At night. Tell me that’s not an improvement.”

He stared at her for a minute before sighing. “All right, it is. Happy now?”

She inspected her nails. “No. You could do better. But you have time to practice.”

~

He does do better. He feels like an idiot, having his friends sleep in his room to fend off his nightmares like a six-year-old sleeping with his parents, but it _works_. He still hasn’t managed more than a few hours at once, but now sometimes he doesn’t panic when he wakes up. It feels like a stupid thing to be excited about, but that’s apparently his life now. 

They all have different ways of dealing with his middle-of-the-night panics. Gina usually ignores him, which he feels like he should be upset by but actually just finds reassuringly _Gina_ , and even just having her there is good. Terry (the one or two nights he takes a turn - he does have a family, after all) either sleeps through it all (the first time) or goes and stands like a protective orc in front of the door (the second time). Rosa sits on the air mattress and reads, either with the light off or on depending on how Jake is feeling. Charles tries many things, including singing lullabies, playing lullabies off of Spotify, improvising a “calming interpretive dance”, heading to the kitchen to make a snack (Jake headed him off on that one), and reading random things out loud. Jake finally demands quiet at night and does his best to feign sleep to encourage Charles to do the same. Hitchcock and Scully are not on the roster for Operation Babysit Jake, by the unspoken agreement of everyone involved, and Amy…

Amy quickly becomes Jake’s favorite person to have spend the night. The first time she takes a turn, when he wakes up with the inevitable racing heart that characterizes all of his sleep these days, he first tries to pretend he hasn’t woken up. When his body insists that no, he must be awake, he rolls unsteadily out of bed to go feel the sliding bolt lock he put on the door. It’s become his habit after he learned his lesson about turning on the light unexpectedly when sharing the room with someone. Although apparently Amy can be woken up just by him moving around the room.

“Jake?”

“Hm?”

“You okay?”

He tries to slow his heart rate enough to speak normally. “Yeah. Sure. Great.”

He hears her turn over. “Sure. Go back to sleep, then.”

He touches the lock one more time, then climbs back into bed. 

Several minutes pass before he hears the air mattress squeak as she climbs off of it. “You’re not sleeping.”

“No,” he admits. 

She climbs onto the bed behind him and sits on top of the covers. After a second she puts her hand on his shoulder, and he feels some of the awful tension in his muscles leave. She hums knowingly and settles back, leaning against the wall at the head of the bed and laying her arm across his upper back. They stay like that until Jake, amazingly, falls asleep for the second time in one night.

When he wakes up again, she’s back on the air mattress, fast asleep. It’s almost six, which he can convince himself means it’s morning, so he gets up and tiptoes out to the living room. 

Before Amy leaves that morning, she offers him a hug. He agrees, then stands stiff as a board as she hugs him. It’s nice, though. That’s why when she offers one again the next time she’s there, he accepts it, and maybe even relaxes a fraction when she puts her arms around him.

Yes, Amy’s method of calming him down is his favorite.

~

Jake has noticed - and noted - that Captain Holt has been absent from all of the Operation Babysit Jake (And Get Him An Apartment) discussions. That on its own is unremarkable, given that the plan’s very existence definitely violates Holt’s policy of keeping work separate from personal life. What he has also noticed is that Holt has been seeming more forgiving when various members of the squad are sleepy and/or vaguely out of it at work. It’s almost like he knows that they’re taking turns sleeping on a weird air mattress with a scaredy-cat of a coworker. 

He mentions this to Rosa, who furrows her eyebrows at him and says, “Are you asking me if the captain knows about us helping you?”

“Uh, yeah, pretty much.”

“Yeah. He does. I told him. He said, and I quote, ‘I will not be partaking in this stunt. However, if it will help Peralta stop sleeping on the sofa-’”

Jake interrupts her. “He knows about that?”

She gives him a withering look. “Duh. He’s not blind.”

“I mean, obviously, he’s brilliant, but I kind of thought he’d write me up or something for sleeping on the job.”

Rosa’s expression softens a bit. The corner of her mouth even starts to smile. “I don’t think the thought ever crossed his mind, Jake.” She pauses. “He likes you.”  
“Oh.” Jake knew that, of course. He just hadn’t thought it extended to outrageous things like sleeping at work.

“He’s not gonna be sleeping on your floor anytime soon,” Rosa continues. “But he does want you to do what you need to take care of yourself.”

“Huh. Thanks, Rosa.” Jake turns to leave.

“Jake?”

He turns back.

She’s looking at him intently, with all the force of her Diaz Stare. “You are _not_ a scaredy-cat. If I hear anyone say so, _including you_ , I will personally throw them off a balcony.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Then Jake laughs. “Well, that was terrifying. Thanks! Byeeeee!”

He trots off to his desk, but they both know that her real message had come through loud and clear.

~

“Aaaaaand done!” Charles practically drops the last box onto Jake’s new living room floor.

“Charles, be careful!” Jake yelps. “How do you know that doesn’t have all my fine china?”

“You don’t own a single piece of fine china,” Rosa says from the other side of the room. 

“Well, that is a valid argument,” Jake agrees. “But my point stands.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Jake, do you even _own_ bedsheets?” Amy demands from the next room.

“Of course I do! You’ve seen them on my bed for weeks now!” Jake hurries in. “They must be in one of the boxes.”

“So we have to unpack all the boxes until we find the sheets?”

“Just dump stuff on the floor.” He demonstrates by scooping things out of a box and tumbling them onto said floor. 

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “It’s your stuff, I guess.”

They order pizza for dinner and sit haphazardly among boxes and piles of random objects to eat and talk and laugh. Eventually the squad starts to trickle back to their own houses one by one.

“Ugh, tomorrow I have to go to _work_ ,” Gina complains. “I need to go get my rest.”

“We all have to work tomorrow, Gina,” Amy points out.

“Which is why I am going home to not see all your faces for ten whole hours,” Gina retorts.

As his friends leave, Jake feels the high of having a new apartment begin to fade, leaving behind a familiar thread of anxiety. Finally it’s only him and Amy sitting on the sofa. 

“Want to watch TV?” he asks hopefully.

“The TV isn’t even plugged in yet,” she points out. 

“Oh. Yeah.” He deflates a little. 

“I should go home.”

“I know.”

She looks at him knowingly. “Are you worried about being on your own?”

“That’s silly,” he replies automatically. Then he sighs. “Yeah.”

“That makes sense.” She nods. “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. I need to go home, but before I do that we’re going to go through the whole house together and check it. Got it?”

“Okay.”

She stands up. “Let’s go.”

Amy is thorough. She takes him through each room and checks that all the windows are locked. Then she checks what’s behind all the doors. Finally they come to the front hall. 

“When I leave, you’re going to lock the front door behind me. Then I’ll try to open it, and it won’t open, because it’s locked. Then you can go to bed and sleep the night away.”

It feels stupid to have her explaining something so simple, but it helps. He nods.

Then she pulls him into a hug. 

Jake drops his head to her shoulder and sighs deeply. She wraps her arms fully around him and he feels safe and secure and _protected_. He squeezes her and shivers as she gently strokes his back. Finally, she lets go and smiles at him. 

“I’ll see you at work?”

He nods. “Thanks, Amy.”

She smiles again, then goes out the door. He locks it behind her. A second later the latch rattles, but the door stays shut. 

Jake doesn’t sleep the night away. Nowhere close. He does fall asleep in less than two hours, though, and spends less than half an hour throughout the night clutching his blanket and trying to control his breathing. And when the sun rises in the morning, he’s gotten almost six hours of sleep, put together. At work that day, he spends all his time at his own desk in the bullpen, except when he and Charles go out to (successfully) investigate a case.

It’s not perfect, of course not. But it’s progress. It’s improvement.

Jake Peralta will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! I really appreciate every comment I get on my writing.


End file.
